Fareed Zakaria: The Post-American World

Basically that is what the "New World Order" is all about. The leading nations of the world banding together to be the leadership of the world....aka a "Post-American World."

The rise of Islam scares me more thanabsolutely anything.

Me too, Dorine. Me too....

Your LINK does not seem to be working.

I watched Fareed talk about this the other night on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.

Fareed made some really insightful points, not that I agreed with all of them.

I wish your link worked, but I will go to the On-Point web site and see if I can find the discusion.

Thanks for sharing this. It is very timely.

I think the US has lost its greatness, traded away by the merchant class after WWII for money and control and all the games we have played on ourselves that have reduced the expectations of the average American. We had a great thing, and chose to fool ourselves with marketing making fools of our own people who are now ignorant, obese, and powerless.

I agree with Dorine about Islam.

I agree with Donald about the New World Order ... somewhat. We could model the world on Pre-Federal America ... the Confederacy of States before we ratified the Constitution. That model would allow for the North to be similiar to what we call the West today ... the Democracies. The Rogue states could be roughly equivalent to the South ... those who ignore human rights and pray on man's weaknesses.

The bring this all together, are we going to unite like the United States did when we first declared ourselves a country ... with slavery and inequality, or can we do better having seen the mistakes the US made?

This is a Great Interview!!

Thanks for pointing it out to me.

You still need to fix your link.

I wouldn't call this "the rise of the rest," it's more like just "the rise of the next".

There are, after all, only a handful of new countries currently rising to consumer economic might.

Zakara is laser on when he talks about our need to redefine the American persona in the world. We no longer win at trying to be "the biggest" and we need to move on to being "the best" lest we fall into the mire of being "a has been" or end up being known as "the Bulliest."

Fareed points out how often America, both our government and private sectors, are turned to to act as mediators between the dealings of other countries, especially in regards to commerce and industry.

WE are the voice of experience; and the way to capitalize on that is to BE the voice of wisdom. The only reason America did not become a giant industrial wasteland is because "the people" spoke up and insisted on change toward conscientious stewardship.

He is exactly right when he says that our fear mongering puts us at high risk of causing self-fulfilling prophecy.

Thanks again for the interview. 10

Forget about being the best Bill, we need to stop the descent. Is there anything that we are number one about anymore except arms, or junk food. Are you kidding about conscientious stewardship? I don't see it, instead I see marketing people looking for the new buzz so they can co-opt it with advertising claims like - new improved green, carbon neutral, carbon friendly, eco-friendly, organic ... there is hardly a word that is not corrupted to sell more of something.

I trace the decline of American civilization back to July 20th, 1969. When John Kennedy declared boldly that America would put a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth before the decade of the 1960s was out he was challenging the nation to undertake a great project and a great adventure. The nation responded and Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon little more than 50 years after the first powered flight.

Since then it has all been about cutbacks, reductions in service, narrowing of vision, tax cuts, layoffs, outsourcing and there are no more great projects and great adventures.

If America committed itself to putting people on Mars within a decade it could be done. It would require a lot of commitment. There would have to be big expenditures requiring increases in taxes. At least 95% of Americans will take huge umbrage at the suggestion they pay more taxes. The conviction that taxes are too high (despite being lower than just about every other industrialized nation) is so ingrained that rage is the immediate response to the idea.

But the jobs and wealth that would be created by the project would make it all worth it, and America would be great again.

Not gonna happen, though.

Listened to this on the nighttime rebroadcast and felt the urge to post a reply to this tripe.

The majority of the world's population views the U.S. as the greatest threat to world peace, for good reason. They're not likely to voluntarily make our leaders chairmen of any board, unless it's a World Court waterboard for ongoing crimes against humanity.

Zakaria makes a good living in the heart of empire primarily defending the corporate-protectionism called "free trade" -- the legal framework for assigning sovereignty and collective assets to a wealthy oligarchy by taking it away from the world's people and their governments. That he's slightly less myopic than the usual talking heads in the mirrored spin-room of American media (including NPR) is only a result of his nuanced function in the oppression and distraction game.

He ignores the massive misery of the majority that has been created by corporate privatization (including in India and the rest of Asia) and instead offers anecdotal evidence in favor of a relatively tiny middle class of power-collaborating technocrats like himself. He mistakenly assigns all the world's wealth creation to his corporate masters, while ignoring the benefits accrued from social investment, from the fierce protectionism employed by the Asian Tigers among others (like us), and the higher economic growth rate of "developing countries" in the pre-neoliberalism period.

Typical NPR pap, ignoring real issues in favor of fantasies of the "master race."

Rory, I was for the space program all my life. NASA is a shadow of what it was, and it does not seem like whatever magic we lost with it can be reproduced. The same one size fits all incompetence that exists merely to funnel money to one group of anonymous people has descended like a black cloud over the country, and if we could identify it and see it maybe we could do something about it, probably not because we do not have a common culture or goal anymore. I like the idea of reaching to the star, but I do not think most Americans could get behind that being our uniting reason to exist.

Andy ... why do you blame NPR for Zakaria, they expose a lot of ideas from a lot of people and they are much better than anything else out there. You just want to throw the baby out with the bathwater I think.

If America committed itself to putting people on Mars within a decade it could be done. It would require a lot of commitment. There would have to be big expenditures requiring increases in taxes. At least 95% of Americans will take huge umbrage at the suggestion they pay more taxes.

Why not something more attainable and beneficial like ending our reliance on foreign oil?

bruce, I think Zakaria is typical of what passes for the "liberal" end of the media in this country, and NPR is thought of that way too. Both characterizations seem absurd to me, having been raised by my FDR/Depression/WWII era parents, who actually are liberal and whose have views are nowhere to be found in today's corporate media (including NPR).

Of course, there have always been liberal hawks as well, such as those who gave us the Vietnam War and who supported the Operation Condor assassination program in Latin America in the 1960s, among other goodies.

I've moved beyond liberal, though, to an actual "left" opposition viewpoint, which is even more absent (unmentionable) in political discussion in this country. Gore Vidal described our political system as a mutant with two right wings, and I think that about sums it up.

If you travel outside the U.S. and talk to people about politics (besides the power elites and minority America-lovers of Zakaria's social circles), they have an understanding of what left politics are, beyond the cartoon evil-doer anti-communist indoctrination-from-birth we get here.

But you don't need to leave the country to find us, and there are more lively babies than NPR in this country. Check out ZNet -- http://www.zcommunications.org or any of a half-dozen magazines and websites for actual left views, or The Nation or The Progressive for traditional liberal views.

Unfortunately, everyone with a significant national mouthpiece in this system (including NPR) are beholden to corporations and the wealthy, as designed. NPR & PBS sold the Iraq War lies, corporate welfare and deregulation lies, and are now selling the Iran bogieman lies almost as agressively as Fox News, and they're not much better on any other issue. (Where's the labor reporting?)

Our "public" media could be set up as independent media organizations -- by having independent, lock-box funding set aside through taxes on corporate media, as one suggestion -- but it instead relies on a fickle and timid Congress and on begging for corporate underwriting, or outright ownership, as in the News Hour and other "public affairs" programming.

I've been an NPR listener for 20 years (with a little bit of sunshine from community radio now and then), but I lost my illusions that it was anything other than 90 percent crap when I heard Daniel Schorr on a call-in show during our first Gulf War berate and belittle a caller for suggesting that that war was about oil, even as Sec. of State Baker was answering the same question with, "Of course it's about oil."

This baby's stilldead and the water is rank.

Zakaria, is a right winger as far as I can see. He is the result of the right wing monitoring NPR for many years and demanding a say. Which really means they are putting the screws on NPR to be partisan, which hey used to do very well. I used to get a lot out of listening to Firing Line when I was a kid, and other Conservative shows on NPR and never had a problem with it being too Liberal. Yes, there were Liberal ideas, but it seemed balanced to me. So anyway, Zacharias is one of the right wing spokespeople that is on NPR. Occasionally he says something interesting, and at least he is not Rush Limbaugh.

I have never had a problem with Daniel Shorr. Everyone lets loose with zinger everyone once in a while ... that is not partisan.

Anyway, it is about the only thing I will watch, with Discover, History, etc ... I detest popular entertainment these days. I like talk radio, but have little patience with far right or left wing though I try to listen to keep up with what the crazies are up to.

People knee jerk a lot on the issue of the war, and then throw the whole of whatever they are listening to into one category because of it.

I opposed the war at first, really resented our idiotic first atttack. Then as we were there, I supported it because to pull out was not a good idea. Now I am on the fence in terms of it being cost-effective, but I think pulling out is a danger. I am for standing up and backing down Islamic Totalitarianism ... I just think we should be smarter about it, and not have someone who is in bed with the oil companies and the contractors making the decision on that.

Fareed usually has some very good points. He used to host a PBS show on international affairs and their impact on America.

More to the point on this article, we're not yet in a post-American world, but will be there within 50 years. Rampant feree-market and conspicuous consumption have done us in.

Dorine,

We Americans r scared by the rise of Islam, by the rise of China, by the rise of Russia.. in other words the rise of anyone whose ideology is different than ours. it's not shocking or surprising as it's human nature to wary & scared of what's different.

If one has to ask ppl frm outside.. they view America in the same light as we Islam, China & Russia. And out track is not all that rosy, it's quite aggressive if u take a look at it. before we start pointing fingers at others, we should take a look at our own actions first.

Greg Schiller said: "Why not something more attainable and beneficial like ending our reliance on foreign oil?"

I don't want to discredit you or your opinion, Greg, but I think you have expressed perfectly the problem I am alluding to when I talk about a manned mission to Mars and the return of America to the undertaking of great adventures. Everything has become about "my pocketbook". Americans are now only motivated by the possibility of getting more things, having more money, paying less taxes, paying less for consumer goods. This is why WalMart has replaced all the family owned stores across America, hollowed out small towns, reduced people to minimum wage earners they call "associates". This is why government is ineffectual today, because people would rather have a $10 a wekk tax break than a program that could provide health care to all.

While finding a way to break the addiction to foreign oil is a good and laudible project, undertaking what amounts to an effort to keep gas prices, or energy prices, low is too small a mission to galvanize people's willingness to contribute to something greater than themselves.

When Kennedy spoke of a moon landing every American realized that this would not put any chickens in their pots, not give them anything in the way of a direct benefit. But it was worth doing, none the less, worth doing for the grandeur of the accomplishment itself (yes, there was the whole Soviet threat business to help justify the event, but it was pride people felt as they saw their flag on another planet.

What few people realize is just how much benefit flowed to them and their society as a result of the space program. Not only did that vast infusion of public cash create a lot of high paying, high tech jobs, not only did that flow through society to generat a lot of wealth for a lot of people, but the spin-offs have had an impact on everything from consumer goods to industrial manufacturing to medicine. The new technologies created to address problems that had to be overcome to reach the moon had many different applications here on Earth.

The same would be true of trying to overcome the problems presented by a mission to Mars. Perhaps one of the spinoffs would be a technology that would allow us to ween ourselves from imported oil.

But simply focusing on the mundane, on the prosaic, on the quotidienne problems of daily life and personal finances is small thinking. And society has become smaller as a result of this kind of thinking.

Think big. Do big. Be big.

How would Americans feel to sit and watch on TV as a Chinese flag is planted on the surface of Mars?

It was a pleasant conversation to hear. I am from India(born and brought up) but have been living in United States for a while now and I love this country for the freedom it provides to the citizens and immigrants, equality and equal opportunities of growth. The conversation with Freed Zakaria was interesting but unfortunately I have differing views. I noted few points out of his conversation and following are my views.

About Asian countries like China and India growing because they have adopted Capitalistic system. I disagree as India and China although they have adopted a policy to industrialize but they still have the Social values at the core. The governments in these countires makes sure that most of the population is benefitting from the growth instead of just making a handful of people richer. I think the biggest misconception about communism is that its against industrialization and people's voice is stiffled. Communism is totally pro-industrialization but its state controlled for people by people.

About the comment that US has been following a policy of fear for a long time now. I would say who doesn't? All the governments across the world paint a picture of fear just to get their way. If you show the populous that they are under attack they get ready to do anything to defend the country and then the government/politicians can get their way. Didn't that happen with War in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 even when we still don't understand the rationale behind the war against Iraq. State of fear, politics of fear is easy to sell that politics of development.

For a while US has been following the policies that can be termed as neo-colonialism. If they can go across the world to fight against Afghanistan and Iraq then why can't they help Myanmar? If its US's responsibility to make the world safer and rid of Islamic terrorism then why its not our role to help the world in case of natural calamity. Why double standards?

I think we need to concentrate on working on getting rid of poverty, disease and protecting our environment instead of wasting money on war and fight. We need state of development and not state of fear

Kartikeya - First of all the US and the West is trying to help Myanmar. The government there is a tyranny and so the West wants to see it fall, and so the government eyes our aid with suspicion.

Natural calamities happen all over and then people work their way back. In the case of a tyranny it can affect a country forever, and it can affect other countries negatively as well, so there are differing priorities on those two efforts. It costs more to attack a country than to aid it also.

Also, the Asian countries have among the greatest disaprities of wealth, and China may have some responsbility to its people, according to what they say, but I don't know how you measure how sincere that is? What about the people's need for freedom. What about it's spending so much on arms and weapons now, and what about its occupation of Tibet, and militaristic attitude to Taiwan?

ah... more history from the School of the Game of Telephone in which lies are repeated over and over and somehow become the truth for those too lazy to actually do their own homework!

Rory, first of all, JFK died in November 1963, he had nothing to do with anything that happened 6 years after his death in 1969, as you state. LBJ was the US pres by then and it was his many programs that are the last true hallmark of a great America-on-the-rise. Ever hear of Medicare (which provides health insurance coverage to people who are either age 65 and over, or who meet other special criteria) and Medicaid (which serves low-income parents, children, seniors, and people with disabilities. Medicaid is the largest source of funding for medical and health-related services for people with limited income)? Thank LBJ for those social programs who help our elders and those less fortunate.

Why don't you all read up on the Great Society, which was like an update of Roosevelt's New Deal.

It was because of these liberal programs begun by a dem who basically inherited the top spot in the country after JFK was shot, that we today have voting rights, and a civil rights movement, and a war on poverty. Ideas that were only a dream before that - the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 that pushed all those so-called Dixie-crats (also called Conservative Southern Democrats at the time) to the repuglican party preciously because they couldn't bear the thought of different skin tones mixing in with their trailer-park-white-trash skin tones.

In addition the Kennedy Administration had only been contemplating a federal effort against poverty via a proposed tax cut, but it was LBJ who implemented it. And it was Johnson who launched an "unconditional war on poverty" in the first months of his presidency with the goal of eliminating hunger and deprivation from American life, it's called the War on Poverty.

And what about the Arts? Lobbying for federally funded arts and humanities support began during the Kennedy Administration, but it was LBJ who made supporting the arts a reality. In September 1965, Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act into law, creating both the National Endowment for the Arts (the NEA) and National Endowment for the Humanities (which provided grants for high-quality humanities projects in four funding areas: preserving and providing access to cultural resources, education, research, and public programs) as separate, independent agencies.

And what about The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which chartered the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as a private, non-profit corporation?

And then there's the Cigarette Labeling Act of 1965 which required packages to carry warning labels, and the Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966, which set standards through creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the consolidation of transportation agencies into a cabinet-level Department of Transportation.

Must I go on? Honestly people, take a few minutes to read up on our American history before pontificating on things you clearly know nothing about! The Great Society. LBJ certainly had his many faults, but it was him who was the last great American president simply by what he left the country as his legacy. NO pres since then has equaled him in what they have done to benefit the many as opposed to benefiting the few (as republicans do over and over again). And even though LBJ got the biggest blame for the Vietnam War, it was JFK who got us into it; LBJ just had the hardest time trying to get out of it, and in the end that is why he left office.

And please stop believing the lies that are repeated over and over again, just because someone (your history professor? your high school teachers? your irrational RWN politicos and pontificators and oxy-addicted RWN talk show hosts, your folks?, whoever...) repeats the same lies over and over does not make those lies TRUE!

It's possible for our country to be great again, if we stop electing people who DO NOT have the best interests of the majority of Americans ever again!

And BTW, about Fareed Zakaria, sure he was educated in the right places and he's got the multi-cultural pedigree so popular in today's global marketplace, but he has been wrong many times before. Check out how wrong in an article I wrote a few years ago about Sudan: About Darfur, Sudan (please pay attention Fareed Zakaria). Zakaria sees the world through his own brand of Islamic-living-in-the-west-colored glasses, as reading his column in Newsweek can attest. I get Newsweek and I read this OpEd piece talked about here, and thought it had many interesting points, some of which I did not agree with and some of which I did. But whether or not we agree with someone's opinion should be based on truths, not lies repeated in hopes of supplanting the truth.

(BTW, sorry for the overly long comment! But this issue is a real pet peeve o' mine)

And Kartikeya - you say:

> "For a while US has been following the policies that can be termed as neo-colonialism. If they can go across the world to fight against Afghanistan and Iraq then why can't they help Myanmar? If its US's responsibility to make the world safer and rid of Islamic terrorism then why its not our role to help the world in case of natural calamity. Why double standards?"

From all the news reports I've been reading and watching about the Myanmar Cyclone disaster the US has 3 ships and 10 helicoptors waiting off the coast of Myanmar are full of emergency rescue supplies that the generals in power will not allow to land because they're American. I've heard this same story on the BBC, CBC, as well as CNN & CNBC. OF course, we're talking about the Bushco regime here, and as usual they don't appear to know how to respond to a crisis if it's not affecting the banks where they keep their money or the oil companies where they manufacture their money.

I've just heard that the Myanmar generals have given OK to allow 1 US Air Force cargo plane into Myanmar with relief supplies. But, as usual, Bushco signal's his true feelings with the horribly mis-timed signing Tuesday of legislation awarding a Congressional gold medal to Myanmar's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi. Granted she deserves the attention, but amid the devastation and suffering going on in Myanmar he, once again, Bushco can't seem to understand global politics. Blame the repuglicans, not the rest of us Americans who Bushco does not - and never has - represent.

The link didn't work for me so I don't know what Zakaria had to say.

I look at world leadership in a different way. Going back through time I doubt that many of the world leadership countries/cultures were seldom like, maybe revered a bit. Mostly it seems they brought change to their societies and gave them a hope in change.

The US will lose its leadership as it suppresses the individuals and their creativity. The point about a trip to Mars is well made; it is a good example of how the opening of creativity would bring change and hope.
China and India are changing economically, but socially they are still clinging to tradition and repression of individuals and their creativity.

The rest of the world may come together, why I don't know, but what will they offer the world for hope?

Right now the capitalism that is growing around the world and the liberty is coming from one place, US. Just as Myanmar catastrophe bring to mind a turn to the US, the rest of the world will help maybe not as much in total or base on per capita, is an example of the "world leader". As a test of leadership, when you think of an emergency, catastrophe, a new idea, hope, what country would be the first mentioned, that is the leader?

As much as 'we' complain about health care and drugs, about big companies like Wal-Mart, Microsoft, they are helping the world change, they are the US.

If pressed for a condidate for the next wave of change, not in my life time, Brazil is the least repressive of the current economic growth leaders.

Digital Dogs: I was not saying that Kennedy was there in 1969, but rather that Kennedy's public declaration earlier in that decade was the impetus to chase that dream (which scientists involved in the program prior to Kennedy's speech did not believe they could achieve so quickly). It was Nixon who was in the White House in 1969 during the moon landing, he talked with Armstrong via radio from the White House. But neither Nixon nor Johnson were directly responsible for the decision to pursue the moon landing so aggressively. That was Kennedy's decision and it was a visionary one. When a society stops pursuing grand goals it has only one direction left to go: down.

(But I agree with you re The Great Society initiatives of the Johnson administration.)

Sorry if I reacted harshly Rory, I'm just so tired of all this reinvention of facts & history that the RWN are so fond of and even though I have no love for LBJ, the programs he introduced are the ones our society has benefited from the most.

Whenever a repug is in office they mess up our countries finances and always take from those less fortunate to give more to those who don't need it and I wanted to set the record straight. Whether or not people liked LBJ isn't the issue, it's the programs he was responsible for pushing through that have benefited our country more than any other pres in recent history. And i just wanted to get the facts out there.

America might have done many things wrong and supported some brutal governments, but they basically kept the peace and represented democracy. If we had a strong, functional, highly democratic international system the weakening of American power would be a good thing. But we don't, and whatever replaces the American hegemony is likely to be worse.

I am happy that we have democracy here but we don't have to shove democracy down everyone throats... if China wants to have communism, i don't really care.. let them have it.

To hear a more recent speech by Zakaria, and join a discussion about it, visit http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977357502, the group for the public radio program, Word for Word.